A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

Lovecraft remarked in 1935: ‘Chester Pierce Munroe & I claimed the proud joint distinction of being the worst boys in Slater Ave. School … We were not so actively destructive as merely antinomian in an arrogant & sardonic way—the protest of individuality against capricious, arbitrary, & excessively detailed authority.’⁷ This disregard of rules came to the fore during the graduation ceremony for Lovecraft’s class in June 1903. He was asked to make a speech for the occasion—which may or may not suggest that he was the valedictorian and therefore ranked first in his class—but had initially refused to do so; then, while the ceremony was actually in progress, he changed his mind. Approaching Abbie Hathaway, the school principal, he announced boldly that he wished to make the speech after all, and she acquiesced and duly had him announced. Lovecraft had, however, in the interim written a hasty biography of Sir William Herschel, the astronomer; and as he mounted the podium he declaimed it in ‘my best Georgian mode of speech’. He adds that, though the beginning of the speech ‘elicited smiles, rather than attention’ from the adults in the audience, he nevertheless received a round of applause at the end.⁸

But school was the least significant of Lovecraft’s and his friends’ concerns; they were primarily interested—as boys of that age, however precocious, are—in playing. And play they did. This was the heyday of the Providence Detective Agency, which featured Lovecraft and his pals carrying ‘handcuffs’ (of twine), tape measure, tin badge, and even (for Lovecraft) a real revolver— presumably not loaded. Lovecraft did some actual detective writing at this time: ‘I used to write detective stories very often, the works of A. Conan Doyle being my model so far as plot was concerned’, he writes in 1916, and then goes on to describe one such work about ‘twin brothers—one murders the other, but conceals the body, and tries to live the life of both … This, I think, antedates my 11th year.’⁹ If Lovecraft is accurate in the dating of this tale, it would predate ‘The Mysterious Ship’, and sounds rather more entertaining than that specimen.

Among the enthusiasms which Lovecraft and his boyhood friends shared was railroads. The coachman at 454 Angell Street had built a summer-house for the boy Lovecraft when he was about five. Lovecraft deemed this building ‘The Engine House’ and himself built ‘a splendid engine … by mounting a sort of queer boiler on a tiny express-waggon’. Then, when the coachmen left (probably around 1900) and the stable was vacated of its horses and carriage, the stable itself became his playground, with ‘its immense carriage room, its neat-looking “office”, and its vast upstairs, with the colossal (almost scareful) expanse of the grain loft, and the little three-room apartment where the coachmen and his wife had lived’.¹⁰

Some odd literary works were produced as a result of this interest in railroads. First there is a single issue of a magazine called The Railroad Review (December 1901), a three-page item full of Lovecraft’s usual profusion of illustrations. Much more interesting is a 106-line poem dated to 1901 whose title on the cover reads: An Account in Verse of the Marvellous Adventures of H. Lovecraft, Esq. Whilst Travelling on the W. & B. Branch of the N.Y.N.H. & H.R.R. in Jany. 1901 in One of Those Most Modern of Devices, to Wit: An Electric Train. It bears an alternative title in its interior: ‘H. Lovecraft’s Attempted Journey betwixt Providence & Fall River on the N.Y.N.H. & H.R.R.’

This poem is notable for being the first—and, as it happens, one of the best—instances of Lovecraft’s humorous verse. A little historical background for this piece is useful. The New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad (N.Y.N.H. & H.R.R.) had by 1893 become the principal operator of all railroads in the state of Rhode Island. The first electric street cars in Providence had begun running in 1892, and the extension of this service to the outlying localities of Warren, Bristol (the W. & B. Branch), and Fall River appears to have occurred in 1900. With his fascination for railroads, Lovecraft not surprisingly became one of the first patrons of the new service; and the result is a delightfully witty poem on a very modern theme.

In discussing Lovecraft’s boyhood pastimes it is impossible to pass over the Blackstone Military Band. Lovecraft’s violin lessons may have been a disaster, but this was something altogether different. Here’s how he tells it: